Category: Assignment 5

Using colour and pattern to convey the joy and intensity of the bond between mother and child, focusing particularly on breastfeeding.

For this project I wanted to show the intensity of the bond between a mother and child and the immense joy that comes with that. At the point of starting the project I had just stopped breastfeeding and for me that was such a powerful thing, I wanted to try to record and convey that while it was still fresh in my mind. During pregnancy you are both part of one body and when you breastfeed it is like returning to one functioning whole and in those moments the rest of the world becomes irrelevant. In order for the drawing to be truly personal to me I wanted to use colour and pattern – both a huge part of who I am – to allow the viewer to see the joy of this relationship through my own personal lens.
I looked at various artists who had dealt with this subject before including the theme of Madonna and child in religious painting and then worked to reinterpret it in my own style. I found that while the Bloomsbury group and Harold Gilman inspired and continue to inspire me with their wonderful use of colour it was Picasso’s line drawings and Matisse’ looser work that came to mind again and again throughout this personal project and it was that loose playful drawing style that I particularly wanted to bring into my work. I started by doing as many line drawings as I could of myself and my daughter so that I would feel comfortable and confident with the subject and then I continued on that theme playing with different media and different compositions so that I was building more complex drawings and adjusting my composition until I found the medium and composition that really excited me and was able to finally combine the two to create my final piece.
My preparatory sketches were all very fast line drawings and were a very mixed bag in terms of technical ability, but while none of them would work as stand alone pieces they did really help to build my confidence and gave me a wealth of compositions and lines to use as starting points for my work. For the composition I focused on circles and circular lines to draw the viewer in to the central subject of mother and child. I ended up doing four variants of this final composition; two initial ink sketches from photographs, then one much more worked up ink drawing using solely those sketches to work from and then finally the finished assignment piece for which I drew out the composition in charcoal using the previous three sketches for reference and then built up the colour using photographs to ensure the colours and shading was just right and to give it real depth. Interestingly the third sketch was so exciting at the time that I wondered if I’d be able to better it for the final piece but looking at it now it seems so washy and so obviously a preparatory sketch whereas the final piece feels very much more polished and precise. The combination of working from preparatory sketches and photographs enabled me to maintain total freedom in composing the drawing while still getting the finer details right.

Here it is! A2 in charcoal, pastel and inks. I feel unbelievably proud of this, it’s by far the best thing I’ve ever done and almost makes me want to scrap everything previous which must be a good sign – I want all of my work to be at this level. I nearly ruined it by over-working the skirt but painted over those sections with white ink and actually that added a sense of movement which it didn’t quite have before – thank goodness for white ink! what I feel I’ve achieved in this that I haven’t quite been able to before is to use that loose simplified drawing style that I admire so much in Picasso and Matisse’ work and use exaggerated shapes while still maintaining a likeness. I particularly like the hands and feet in this and while there’s a temptation (for me at least) to add more pattern and not to leave much plain space I think the cleaner simpler style really works for this and makes the patterns that are there pop even more. Of all the pictures I’ve done in this project this is the one that shows best that all-engrossing bond between mother and child which is what I set out to do.